Peony, Evolved
by The13thGirlWithoutASoul
Summary: Everyone has a backstory. This is Mirta's.


Title: Peony, Evolved

Rating: T

Summary: Mirta's backstory.

_**one year after Sparx's demise **_

"Well?" hissed Galene moodily, winds and lightning flashing around only her and whipping around her wavy purple hair. Her younger sister Krystaline waited for their middle sister's report as well, letting tiny blue ice crystals form on her pale fingers in her worry.

Lilith yawned quietly. It was three in the morning, and she had been spying on their own coven all night. "We told them that the Ancestrals would be coming back after sacrificing themselves for our cause."

"Yes..."

"There is more—much more—talk of unrest in some of the converts. They're saying that even though Sparx is dead we didn't actually win, because we don't have the Dragon Fire."

"What gave them that idea? I thought you'd been helping their minds along about believing us." Galene said. Lilith nodded, her dark brown eyes flashing purple for a moment.

"I had been—but they're getting more and more resistant."

"Then do something about it." snapped Krystaline. She had always been the youngest witch by three years but was always ready to lead, already setting her three-year-old daughter Vice up to lead their coven someday. Vice was the oldest of their children, though her mother was the youngest, and Galene couldn't help but feel suspicious or her rush to have a child to lead the next coven.

"I would, but it gets worse." Lilith closed her eyes for a minute before steadying herself. "Some of the converts left tonight."

"WHAT?" yelled Krystaline. Lilith shushed her but there was no real danger of being heard. The room they were in was always locked, though none of the rest of their castle was, and served as their bedroom and secret-spell room with gray stone walls, heavy curtains (always drawn), and the necessary sleeping equipment. The Trix's castle was the biggest thing on the deserted planet of Grim and worked with witch magic very well. "Why didn't you stop them, sister? We need more members, not less!"

"I didn't know what to do!" Lilith yelled back. "I figured I'd ask you!"  
"Who was it?" asked Galene, always the calmest of all of them.

"Violetta and Hendrick, and also Jaron and his family."  
Krystaline smiled. "Jaron and Gianna have two daughters, don't they?"

* * *

"Hurry up, Gianna." urged Jaron tensely. The wizard looked back towards his wife, holding their baby daughter Peony to her chest. Gianna walked slowly, preoccupied by the baby.

Caria, the pair's two-year-old daughter, looked to her mother before slipping her hand into that of her father. "Mommy..." she looked around at their surroundings. She was showing only small signs of magic, but she seemed to be taking after her father and not her mother.

On the planet of Grim, the Trix's castle was one of the only standing structures. It loomed behind them, and while luck was on their side and the night was dark enough to mask their escape, there was nothing on this side of the barren planet to hide behind should their departure be noticed. Only a few trees dotted the sparse landscape.

Gianna would have used her Winx transformations to fly out, but fairy magic did not work on Grim very well, and all the color could have given them away. Most of the coven's witches disliked all fairies, even the converts, and seeing an Enchantix fairy would not have provided any mercy. "Mommy!" Caria whispered again.

"I'm sorry, 'ria! I'm trying to keep her from crying." she whispered back, moving slowly as not to wake the baby.

Suddenly there was a cackling sound and the witches were upon them. Jaron yelled and raised his orb but Lilith sent him into darkness. He tore at his eyes and stuck out randomly, setting fire to a tree. Galene attacked Gianna, who transformed, but the witch ripped the baby from her mother's arms. She screamed and sent an attack at her, but Galene shielded herself. Gianna raised her hand to try again but the she held up Peony in front of herself as a protective measure and with a spell, knocked over Gianna. Krystaline froze the fairy to the ground as she screamed for her children.

Lilith grabbed at Caria as Krystaline froze her father to the ground like her mother.  
Jaron regained his sight as the witches flew out of sight, their children gone.

"What are we doing with the little brats?" Galene asked. "End 'em?"

"Of course, not, you bumbling ninny." Krystaline sneered. "We need more members, I told you. We'll have them adopted by another family—and rename them—something more witchy. She," Krystaline pointed towards the screaming Peony, "Can be Mysta and she," she pointed at the crying Caria, "Can be...Lucia."

* * *

_**seven years later**_

"Come on, Lucia!" yelled Mysta joyfully as she pumped her legs on the swing. Her best friend Lucia swung next to her with less enthusiasm.

Mysta was seven years old and Lucia was nine. Their parents, Mysta's mother Dian and Luchia's mother and father Anne and Yate, didn't tell them about her involvement with the Trix, preferring instead to send them to far-away schools and introduce them to the idea when they were older.

(Actually, she didn't prefer it. Krystaline had demanded it.)

They were currently playing at Mysta's home in one of the tiny villages of Grim, planning a sleepover that night. The girls had no idea they were sisters, but had continued to act as best friends and witches all their lives. Though Lucia was beginning to show real progress with insect magic, Mysta's magic was weaker.  
"Why aren't you swinging, Lucia?" asked Mysta, planting her feet on the ground. Lucia hesitated, then hung her head.

"Glitta and Bliss found out I wasn't a fairy today." she whispered. The only far-enough away schools to satisfy the Trix were mostly fairy schools, with a few special-ed witch classes. "They said a witch can't play with them at recess or sit with them at lunch or—"  
"You can sit with me, Lucia! And you can play with me at recess, too." Mysta trilled with the cheerfulness derived of innocence. "Although they're prob'ly mad 'cause you told them you were a fairy."

"You don't understand, Mysta," Lucia said impatiently. "Witches and fairies can't be friends; it's impossible. They're too different and they've never liked each other."

"But why—"  
"You don't get it, do you? Everyone thinks that witches are bad and mean, so the teachers prefer the fairies. And everyone thinks fairies are all good and pretty, so everyone else likes them, too." Lucia sighed and looked up at the sky.

* * *

Lilith frowned as she glanced at her sisters, both huddled around the crystal ball. "They're doing fine, just like they have been every year when we check on them. What's the big deal?"

"At least the little one is still sure she's a witch. That's the important thing." Galene said. Suddenly there was knock on the door, and then it swung open. "I thought I told you to keep that thing locked!" shrieked the weather witch, throwing her cloak over the ball.

In trailed Vice, Darcie, and Storme, the trio's daughters called Icy, Darcy, and Stormy respectively. Giving nicknames was a tradition of young witches. "Mother..." said Icy slowly. "What are you doing?"

"Nothing important, Icy," Krystaline rolled her eyes at her nearly-adolescent daughter. Now that Icy's place as leader of the next coven was secured and her mother's legacy therefore also secure, she seemed no longer to have use for the silvery-haired witchchild. "Go off and play somewhere else."

"But I was going to tell you..." Icy pointed towards the curtained window, "Ludmilla wants you downstairs right now."

Ludmilla was their security chief. Krystaline waved her daughter and nieces out of the room and walked downstairs.

That night, Lucia and Mysta lay in their sleeping bags in the cellar. Mysta had begged Dian to let them sleep in the cellar, since their home had only three rooms otherwise: Dian and Mysta's, the kitchen, and the living room. They whispered excitedly until about ten, when they fell asleep.

Mysta awoke to a loud rumbling noise. She sat up quickly and shook Lucia awake. Everywhere around them there were yells and noise, and sometimes the house shook. The two little witches were instinctively silent until they heard screams from the floors above them.

Mysta's mother Dian.

The two witches cried. Only much, much later they would find out that the attack and complete raid of Grim's coven was from a branch of the former Company of Light, which had gone a more twisted way then it's most celebrated branches and became responsible for over six hundred witches' deaths with no trial or even checking to see if the person had even been with the coven at the time of the petrification of Sparx.

Lilith had masked herself in darkness in the tower when the attack came. Her sisters Galene and Krystaline were downstairs fighting and were killed; she now had three daughters instead of one, and she whispered this fact to them as the crouched behind a curtain in the pitch black, locked tower room. They were witches; there was no point in disguising the truth.

Lilith had fled with her daughters only a few hours after a strain of the Company of Light not bent on vengeance had put an end to the raid, so one day later when relief teams came to clean things up, one volunteer found two young witches crouched in the rubble of a basement and still, miraculously, alive.

They would have been immediately put into care homes for that sort of thing but for the memories of the coven that the caretakers were sure they possessed despite Mysta and Lucia's protests. The caretakers, afraid the girls had been trained to believe in the Trix, had them sequestered in a Magix hospital for a few weeks on the presence of injury while they located families for them, and then they received news that they were to be adopted by two witch families living on Popularis.

Their current caretaker was named Gemma, and she was businesslike and a fairy. She treated the two with plastic kindness, pity, and an edge of coldness.  
She informed Mysta that her new parents, Mina and Charles Halle, would be ready to pick up one little girl (_seven years old, red haired, seventy-one pounds, three feet eleven inches tall, poss. trauma case_) named Mirta and that Debra and Finn Ouser would be adopting her best friend (_ten years old, green haired, eighty-four pounds, four feet six inches tall, poss. trauma case_) named Lucy.

When Mysta (now Mirta) said that she'd much prefer to keep her old name, thank you, all the kindness disappeared from Gemma's face and she leaned in close to the little girl, sitting upright on the hospital bed they'd insisted on.

"Listen to me, _Mirta_. Do you know who you were named after when your vile mother named you? A deceased member of the coven, Mysta Kair; one of the damnable witches who was able to directly communicate with the Ancesstresses. And your little friend was named after her twin. No one wants to take in a little witch with such direct ties to the coven, let alone one with a coven's name. Be grateful that anyone wants to take you at all—especially after what your mother did.

"Dian Rivera did terrible things to lots of people, Mirta. Do you know what she did?"

Gemma Dailet was no terrible person. She was affably kind to everyone she met, even most of the witches. She had earned her Enchantix in high school by saving her older brother from having his soul repossessed. She believed, more then anything, and goodness was good and badness was bad and there was no in-between. So it is justifiable to think that she wasn't trying to be cruel when she informed the little witch of what the coven had done. Yes, she had made it sound like Dian was responsible for each of the deeds personally, but all of the Trix witches were evil, weren't they? Wasn't she only saving this tainted little witch from going the same path as her mother?

Yes, she was, even as tears pooled in the child's eyes and fell down her cheeks, which was when Gemma fell silent.

"Why...why can't...they all just...just get...along?" sobbed Mirta, looking up at the adult in the room for guidance.

Now Gemma was sorry for what she'd said. But there was really only one answer. "Because this is the way it's always been, Mirta. Witches may not all be evil, but they don't get along with fairies. The two are just too different."  
"Too different." whispered Mirta, mostly to herself.

Obviously not many people the Magix Dimension shared these views. There were plenty of fairies who were as kind to witches as they were their own kind, and there were many witches who regarded fairies as as competent and intelligent. Mirta's new family was vaguely tolerant due to some nephew marrying an Enchantix fairy.

Lucy's new family was not tolerant. At all.

This difference influenced Mirta and Lucy's friendship, beginning with where they lived (Lucy lived in the lower-class, all-witch neighborhoods, while Mirta's house was next-door to a fairies', very large and bright and always warm) where they went to elementary school (Lucy went to a public school of mixed fairies and witches, where there were fights and cliques and someone always ended up getting hurt, and Mirta went to a private-but-tolerant mostly-witch school) and how they fared in middle school (loners expect for themselves, because there was only one middle school in their town).

Despite some growing differences, Mirta desperately tried to keep her only friend close. The differences, she reminded herself constantly, were like tiny cracks in a window. The whole thing would have to shatter explosively into her face and cut her skin before she would give up.

So during the summer before freshman year when Lucy came into her room waving a scholarship application she had received for the most prestigious witch school in the dimension, Cloud Tower (Lucy's grades had always been better then hers, and not because of her stronger magic) and told her that they'd both have to make it in (Mirta's family could afford this; Lucy's could not) Mirta had accepted with no hesitation. She would enter as a freshman, and Lucy would be a junior.

Finally, it seemed that the cracks could be mended, or at least put off for a few more years. Mirta had had her life planned out to a T. She had always wanted to be a teacher at a fairy-witch primary school. In primary school, the focus was always on developing powers, with middle school being more about math, science, literature, history, etcetera and higher* school focusing on both, but mostly on the magical side of education.

She had counted on a degree in Primary Magical Education from Cloud Tower. She hadn't counted on meeting the Winx Club. She hadn't counted on unlocking her fairy magic. She hadn't counted on being called to Faragonda's office half-way through junior year, either.

"Hello, Headmistress." she had said coming in. She noted the distinct lack of Griselda.

"Mirta. Take a seat, please." Faragonda smiled slightly. "I...something has been brought to my attention that I feel I must share with you."

A sinking feeling settled down. Though her memories of before life with her family in Popularis were faint, she still knew what had happened. It was even in history books. "It's about what happened on Grim, isn't it?"

"No." Faragonda's words were crisp, as if she seemed insulted that Mirta would assume she didn't know. "It's about what happened before."

"Before what?"

In answer, Faragonda handed her a folder with a few papers. The Trix's mothers were unfortunate at taking over the universe, but fairly good at keeping records, or at least, Galene had been. She had believed everything should be in had firsthand experience with her daughter, now Mirta wondered if Galene dropping so early out of Stormy's life had made her so disorganized and short-tempered. No one had thought to write down anything about the two 'repurposed' children except Galene, who had had notes on every member. Underneath 'offspring' was _Peony_ and _Caria_, and that had been crossed out with a thin pencil line—as had Gianna and Jaron's names, but underneath the daughters' names the words _Mysta and Lucia_ had been written.

"We do know that these children are...were..."

"Lucy and I." Mirta, or rather, Peony, said quietly, leaning back into the chair. "I...I didn't—does Lucy know?"

"No. I thought perhaps you might want to tell her."

"Thanks," there was still one more thing. "Our parents...?"

They had been torn apart by the rabid wolves that guarded the castle while they were frozen to the ground, powerless.

"They died in a craft accident leaving Grim."

She picked up her cellphone to call Lucy. They had definitely gone separate ways; Lucy was pursuing a degree in Black Magic Curses and Mirta, Fairy-Human Relations. Lucy had always seemed so determined to prove herself a witch, and Mirta wondered if this was why. They had also stopped talking.

She wondered if Lucy had any faint memories, or even ideas of memories, of their mother. She dialed the number in her room, her roommate absent.  
"Lucy here." her voice had sharpened since Mirta had last heard her, several months ago. "Who's this?"

"Mirta—don'thangup—Lucy, I have something important to tell you."

"I told you I was done with fairies, Mirta. And I told you not to call me again."

"But—"

"Mirta, just get over your-fairy-self." Lucy said, flatly.

"Would you not ever talk to me?" she replied, sadly. "Not even if it was something really import—"

"Look, I don't care. You're a fairy, I'm a witch, and I'm sick of you pretending it doesn't matter." Lucy made a show of banging her phone on a table before hanging up.

Mirta set her phone on the desk and sighed, then tossed the papers underneath her bed. If Lucy didn't want to know, she didn't have to. She was set to tutor a new fairy named Roxy after lunch; Bloom had asked her personally. Might as well get to it.

Besides, Lucy was right. She hadn't wanted to be like the Trix (why did Lucy idolize them so much? They only ended up in jail) so she had chosen a different path. It was no one's fault that it wasn't the way that Lucy went. They could both make their own decisions.  
She was Peony, evolved.

_fin._

**A/N: Longest oneshot I've ever written. It's been in my head for years. I always figured this was one explanation for Mirta. Was going to post this on Christmas, but I went to Disneyworld instead (it was a surprise! My parents are ninjas, apparently) so look for some Sting and Fail Safe updates soon, too. **  
*** Higher School : In my version of Magix education there is primary school (grades K-5) middle school (6-8) and higher school (9-12) which is basically college but skipping high school.**


End file.
